Essay #1 Quest In many of the novels that exist in this world, the topic or the basic plot line revolves around the idea of a “quest”. Sometimes the reader may not always directly notice this idea but once reading carefully through the book, readers start to realize the process and understand the indirect meaning of quest in the novel. In Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones, the main character Susie’s death itself shows the hidden quest that she is taking.
The novel unexpectedly starts with the death of our main character Susie Salmon. Although readers might take this as a very minor part of the story, it actually takes up a big significant portion for the main character Susie. Mentioned by Foster in chapter one of his book, the idea of quest can be broken up into 5 main parts: the quester, a place to go, the stated reason, challenges, and the real reason. Obviously Susie is our quester and her personal heaven described in the novel is the place to go. Not just for Susie but anyone else in this world has the quest of life that is bound to happen towards heaven. Just like that Susie has the stated reason of “nature” towards heaven. Her challenges in this quest can be the idea of how she was actually murdered against the will of nature and time. Also just like what Foster said the character’s main reason for the quest was not simple about nature but about self knowledge. Through this quest Susie finally realizes what heaven was really like and “found strange was how much I [she] desired to know what I [she] had not known on earth” (Sebold 21).
Susie, by having to have her quest through force and challenge, she was able to realize what she was missing out on earth through her death. Also she finally realized how much her death really meant and how much her life really was worth to her.
Essay #2 Weather Often times in novels, a reader simply interprets the weather as simply a part of the plot and doesn’t really care about those details. On the other hand, the weather can symbolize and show many different aspects of the novel or the characters. In Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones, Sebold utilized the weather as a way to emphasize the character George Harvey’s evilness.
George Harvey, the man responsible for the death of many different women, although gets suspected in the beginning, gets off the hook due to the lack of evidences. In Foster’s book How to Read Literature Like Professor, he mentioned how rain is used as the sign or as a symbol for cleansing oneself and shows some kind of a transformation in the characters behavior. On the other hand, even though Harvey encounters rain several times in the novel, there are hardly signs or transformation. But by having Harvey’s action totally different from Foster’s explanations to me it actually highlighted his cruelty. Rather than having the rain to show a certain transformation in Harvey, it was instead his tool to cover up for his murder, “He knew to watch the weather and to kill during an arc of light-to-heavy precipitation because that would rob the police of evidence” (Sebold 65). By showing his mentality to use the rain as a cover up, it showed to the reader his clear and full intention to kill Susie and how it was his own decision to do so.
Through the weather in this novel, although it really wasn’t as similar as the direct interpretation of Foster and how it symbolizes cleansing, through rain, it emphasizes his determination for the murder. Even though there were few other scenes in the book where rain was used as an aspect to determine the mysterious mood and atmosphere, by using them in the middle of Harvey’s actions, it really enhanced his determination and goal.
Essay #3 Symbolism Symbolism is a very broad topic that every reader most likely encountered once while reading. It can be a very broad topic or aspect that can discuss about different things. The novel called The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold uses the novel’s title itself as a symbolism for the whole story and the life without Susie in her world.
Unlike most of the stories, in this novel the author begins the story with our main character Susie Salmon dead and narrating the life after her death. Although in the beginning Susie’s absence in the story seems very awkward, by having herself actually out of the picture it shows her family’s ultimate change in life without her. Susie herself in the beginning has a hard time accepting the fact that she is no longer a part of the picture of life and the living on earth. From the title “Lovely Bones”, it shows how all the events that have happened after her death were merely bones from a part of a whole body that eventually came together and came to be a whole life. “These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections-sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent- that happened after I was gone,” although she began to see life without her in it, she realized that they still eventually came together also to be a part of her life also.
Although there are sometimes chosen meanings for different symbols, just like what Thomas C. Foster said, symbols are simply an intellectual connection between the book and yourself and that they do not always have to have a chosen answer. And for me from the entire novel itself said by Susie and with the events that she tells, they represent the title or the main symbol of the “lovely bones” that grows.
Hello Lauren Kang :)
I thought that your essay was well-written, organized, and very clear. However, I think it could have maybe been a bit better if you analyzed the events a bit more. I liked how you made everything very neat and nicely structured. It was easy to follow and I could understand what you were saying. I also like the quote that you chose for this essay, it seems to tie everything together. Good choice and good job on your essay! :)
- Wonkyung (Alena) Koo
Essay #4 Heart attack In many of the novel, heart attacks don’t just simply speak about the characters physical conditions but has more of a metaphorical and symbolic meaning about the character. In Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones there are no differences. From the main character’s father, Jack’s sudden heart attack in this novel, it represents or shows his emotional sufferings from different events like Susie, the main character’s death.
Starting with Susie’s death, Jack goes through many different emotional distresses such as Abigail, Jack’s wife leaving to California and his inability to find Susie’s murderer but also being unable to take Susie out of his life. And finally after all these events Jack suffers from a heart attack after an argument with his son Buckley about Susie’s Death. Just like what Thomas Foster mentioned in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, different heart illnesses can signify or show the character’s emotional troubles like bad love, loneliness, cruelty, and more. Through Jack’s heart attack, it symbolizes or expresses the loneliness, lack of love, and the emotional troubles he has gone through with these incidents. Even right before his heart attack Jack clearly has emotional and mental dilemmas about taking Susie out of his life, “Then a little voice in his said, Let go… There was an echo in there, and it drummed up into his ears. Let go” (Sebold 292). The physical action of a heart attack didn’t show his weakness in his physical conditions but actually represent the metaphorical and emotional breakdown that he received from those events.
In the end Jack’s suffering from his heart attack showed his breakdown and is a part of the consequence for not being able handle all the emotional misery he felt. The physical suffering of his heart is showing the link between his body to his mental and emotional misery.
Essay #5 Sex Most of the times in literature, there are sometimes few or several sexual interactions or actions written in the book. But are these actions written simply for the name of “sex” or they mean something else? In the novel called The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, the main character Susie’s sexual interaction actually symbolizes or marks the shift in point of view as a person dead, not alive.
For some unknown reason Susie Salmon, despite being dead switches her position with her friend Ruth and came back on earth. Although Susie could have done other actions during that moment, she decides to make love with her crush Ray. According to Thomas C. Foster, the author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, sex doesn’t simply come up in stories or novels for the sake of the action but usually has other meanings like a symbolism. He mentions how even in real life, sex can mean different things like pleasure, sacrifice, submission and more. For Susie, her sexual intercourse with Ray marks the moment when she finally realizes that she is no longer in the picture of living. Rather than being frustrated with the fact that she is not living, she finally moves on to believe or accept she needs to move on and accepts everyone living their life without her, “I had taken this time to fall in love instead- in love with the sort of helplessness I had not felt in dead- the helplessness of being alive, the dark bright pity of being humans” (Sebold 350). By being able to experience life again, she again strongly realizes her position as someone dead that she is no longer going to be able to experience those happenings again.
In conclusion, Susie’s sexual intercourse with Ray made it possible for her to overcome the sudden confusion and dilemma she has about life and death. Susie now sees the clear distinctions of what she has missed from life but is still possible to leave earth without any regrets.
Comment #1
Hey Sarah! I hope you are having a great summer. Well, after reading your essay about blindness, I was able to understand and interpret the possible different meanings blindness can have. Your idea was very clear throughout the essay and how your main focus was on how blindness doesn’t always have to be something physical but can be something metaphorical. You explanation on the novel with the idea was well organized. However, I think you could’ve added more thought or interpretation about Foster’s idea about blindness to add more interpretations. Your essay still was organized in a very orderly matter, which helped me easier to understand your message, and actually helped it to express what you thought about the novel. One last improvement that might help is maybe an actual quote from the novel that you thought was important or was related to the idea you had in mind. Still overall your clear focus on your idea made the essay clear connected to Foster’s chapter very nicely.
-Sarah Cho Essay #5
Comment #2
Hi Soobin! I hope you enjoyed you summer! Too bad we couldn’t see each other that much during summer! Anyways about your essay, I also wrote about the chapter about quest but it was interesting how your interpretation was similar but different from mine. It was very interesting how you compared the two character’s self-knowledge differently from one another. But on the other hand, by writing both of the characters I think you might have lacked some analysis. Maybe by focusing on one stronger character it might have made your message clearer and stronger. But I really liked your choice on quotation because I think it really reflected the character’s own quest and the real purpose that what Foster said all quests in novels contain. Overall considering the sentence fluency and the idea your message was clear and portrayed a good understanding of Foster’s message about quests in novels.
Lovely Bones
By: Alice Sebold
Essay #1 Quest
In many of the novels that exist in this world, the topic or the basic plot line revolves around the idea of a “quest”. Sometimes the reader may not always directly notice this idea but once reading carefully through the book, readers start to realize the process and understand the indirect meaning of quest in the novel. In Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones, the main character Susie’s death itself shows the hidden quest that she is taking.
The novel unexpectedly starts with the death of our main character Susie Salmon. Although readers might take this as a very minor part of the story, it actually takes up a big significant portion for the main character Susie. Mentioned by Foster in chapter one of his book, the idea of quest can be broken up into 5 main parts: the quester, a place to go, the stated reason, challenges, and the real reason. Obviously Susie is our quester and her personal heaven described in the novel is the place to go. Not just for Susie but anyone else in this world has the quest of life that is bound to happen towards heaven. Just like that Susie has the stated reason of “nature” towards heaven. Her challenges in this quest can be the idea of how she was actually murdered against the will of nature and time. Also just like what Foster said the character’s main reason for the quest was not simple about nature but about self knowledge. Through this quest Susie finally realizes what heaven was really like and “found strange was how much I [she] desired to know what I [she] had not known on earth” (Sebold 21).
Susie, by having to have her quest through force and challenge, she was able to realize what she was missing out on earth through her death. Also she finally realized how much her death really meant and how much her life really was worth to her.
Essay #2 Weather
Often times in novels, a reader simply interprets the weather as simply a part of the plot and doesn’t really care about those details. On the other hand, the weather can symbolize and show many different aspects of the novel or the characters. In Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones, Sebold utilized the weather as a way to emphasize the character George Harvey’s evilness.
George Harvey, the man responsible for the death of many different women, although gets suspected in the beginning, gets off the hook due to the lack of evidences. In Foster’s book How to Read Literature Like Professor, he mentioned how rain is used as the sign or as a symbol for cleansing oneself and shows some kind of a transformation in the characters behavior. On the other hand, even though Harvey encounters rain several times in the novel, there are hardly signs or transformation. But by having Harvey’s action totally different from Foster’s explanations to me it actually highlighted his cruelty. Rather than having the rain to show a certain transformation in Harvey, it was instead his tool to cover up for his murder, “He knew to watch the weather and to kill during an arc of light-to-heavy precipitation because that would rob the police of evidence” (Sebold 65). By showing his mentality to use the rain as a cover up, it showed to the reader his clear and full intention to kill Susie and how it was his own decision to do so.
Through the weather in this novel, although it really wasn’t as similar as the direct interpretation of Foster and how it symbolizes cleansing, through rain, it emphasizes his determination for the murder. Even though there were few other scenes in the book where rain was used as an aspect to determine the mysterious mood and atmosphere, by using them in the middle of Harvey’s actions, it really enhanced his determination and goal.
Essay #3 Symbolism
Symbolism is a very broad topic that every reader most likely encountered once while reading. It can be a very broad topic or aspect that can discuss about different things. The novel called The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold uses the novel’s title itself as a symbolism for the whole story and the life without Susie in her world.
Unlike most of the stories, in this novel the author begins the story with our main character Susie Salmon dead and narrating the life after her death. Although in the beginning Susie’s absence in the story seems very awkward, by having herself actually out of the picture it shows her family’s ultimate change in life without her. Susie herself in the beginning has a hard time accepting the fact that she is no longer a part of the picture of life and the living on earth. From the title “Lovely Bones”, it shows how all the events that have happened after her death were merely bones from a part of a whole body that eventually came together and came to be a whole life. “These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections-sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent- that happened after I was gone,” although she began to see life without her in it, she realized that they still eventually came together also to be a part of her life also.
Although there are sometimes chosen meanings for different symbols, just like what Thomas C. Foster said, symbols are simply an intellectual connection between the book and yourself and that they do not always have to have a chosen answer. And for me from the entire novel itself said by Susie and with the events that she tells, they represent the title or the main symbol of the “lovely bones” that grows.
Hello Lauren Kang :)
I thought that your essay was well-written, organized, and very clear. However, I think it could have maybe been a bit better if you analyzed the events a bit more. I liked how you made everything very neat and nicely structured. It was easy to follow and I could understand what you were saying. I also like the quote that you chose for this essay, it seems to tie everything together. Good choice and good job on your essay! :)
- Wonkyung (Alena) Koo
Essay #4 Heart attack
In many of the novel, heart attacks don’t just simply speak about the characters physical conditions but has more of a metaphorical and symbolic meaning about the character. In Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones there are no differences. From the main character’s father, Jack’s sudden heart attack in this novel, it represents or shows his emotional sufferings from different events like Susie, the main character’s death.
Starting with Susie’s death, Jack goes through many different emotional distresses such as Abigail, Jack’s wife leaving to California and his inability to find Susie’s murderer but also being unable to take Susie out of his life. And finally after all these events Jack suffers from a heart attack after an argument with his son Buckley about Susie’s Death. Just like what Thomas Foster mentioned in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, different heart illnesses can signify or show the character’s emotional troubles like bad love, loneliness, cruelty, and more. Through Jack’s heart attack, it symbolizes or expresses the loneliness, lack of love, and the emotional troubles he has gone through with these incidents. Even right before his heart attack Jack clearly has emotional and mental dilemmas about taking Susie out of his life, “Then a little voice in his said, Let go… There was an echo in there, and it drummed up into his ears. Let go” (Sebold 292). The physical action of a heart attack didn’t show his weakness in his physical conditions but actually represent the metaphorical and emotional breakdown that he received from those events.
In the end Jack’s suffering from his heart attack showed his breakdown and is a part of the consequence for not being able handle all the emotional misery he felt. The physical suffering of his heart is showing the link between his body to his mental and emotional misery.
Essay #5 Sex
Most of the times in literature, there are sometimes few or several sexual interactions or actions written in the book. But are these actions written simply for the name of “sex” or they mean something else? In the novel called The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, the main character Susie’s sexual interaction actually symbolizes or marks the shift in point of view as a person dead, not alive.
For some unknown reason Susie Salmon, despite being dead switches her position with her friend Ruth and came back on earth. Although Susie could have done other actions during that moment, she decides to make love with her crush Ray. According to Thomas C. Foster, the author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, sex doesn’t simply come up in stories or novels for the sake of the action but usually has other meanings like a symbolism. He mentions how even in real life, sex can mean different things like pleasure, sacrifice, submission and more. For Susie, her sexual intercourse with Ray marks the moment when she finally realizes that she is no longer in the picture of living. Rather than being frustrated with the fact that she is not living, she finally moves on to believe or accept she needs to move on and accepts everyone living their life without her, “I had taken this time to fall in love instead- in love with the sort of helplessness I had not felt in dead- the helplessness of being alive, the dark bright pity of being humans” (Sebold 350). By being able to experience life again, she again strongly realizes her position as someone dead that she is no longer going to be able to experience those happenings again.
In conclusion, Susie’s sexual intercourse with Ray made it possible for her to overcome the sudden confusion and dilemma she has about life and death. Susie now sees the clear distinctions of what she has missed from life but is still possible to leave earth without any regrets.
Comment #1
Hey Sarah! I hope you are having a great summer. Well, after reading your essay about blindness, I was able to understand and interpret the possible different meanings blindness can have. Your idea was very clear throughout the essay and how your main focus was on how blindness doesn’t always have to be something physical but can be something metaphorical. You explanation on the novel with the idea was well organized. However, I think you could’ve added more thought or interpretation about Foster’s idea about blindness to add more interpretations. Your essay still was organized in a very orderly matter, which helped me easier to understand your message, and actually helped it to express what you thought about the novel. One last improvement that might help is maybe an actual quote from the novel that you thought was important or was related to the idea you had in mind. Still overall your clear focus on your idea made the essay clear connected to Foster’s chapter very nicely.
-Sarah Cho Essay #5
Comment #2
Hi Soobin! I hope you enjoyed you summer! Too bad we couldn’t see each other that much during summer! Anyways about your essay, I also wrote about the chapter about quest but it was interesting how your interpretation was similar but different from mine. It was very interesting how you compared the two character’s self-knowledge differently from one another. But on the other hand, by writing both of the characters I think you might have lacked some analysis. Maybe by focusing on one stronger character it might have made your message clearer and stronger. But I really liked your choice on quotation because I think it really reflected the character’s own quest and the real purpose that what Foster said all quests in novels contain. Overall considering the sentence fluency and the idea your message was clear and portrayed a good understanding of Foster’s message about quests in novels.
-Soobin Bae Essay #1